Team Trident
The Hawthorne hotel appeared in view as the car diverted from the free highways of Abuja. The journey from Ife had so far been seamless. We’d only gone to the wrong airport twice and entered the wrong car at the airport once. But otherwise- seamless. And now we had arrived.
The hotel lobby was spacious and well-lit, with cushioned seats to sit as we awaited our hotel keycards. Some other teams had arrived already. The delegation from UNN sat working on one of the couches, and I tried to shovel down the wave of anxiety rising in my stomach. We had checked the profiles of the other teams before we came. Bachelor’s, Master’s, and PhD holders, a handful of Professors.
The Trident Team
And here was our team, five 500-level medical students with nary a degree to our name: Kabiawu Yetunde Nofisat, Olaitan Joy Damilola, Balogun AbdulMalik Adeola, Lawal Sheriffdeen Adebowale, and Odelola Bolutife Ayomide. If anyone checked our profiles online before this contest, they’d find all the policymaking experience we had acquired prior to this- absolutely nothing. I thought back to the countless nights we had spent working on the question posed by the organisers: “How might we increase the use of cancer research in policies and policymaking strategies to end cervical and liver cancers?”
We had worked really hard to come this far. The best thing to do was to try our best and have as much fun as possible.
Room Allocation
Our names were called one by one, and we were given, to our shock, one key card each. We looked at our keycards, then looked at each other’s faces, realising that we each had a room to ourselves. One of the staff directed us to all our rooms and gave us directions before we wound up in the last room, Sherriffdeen’s. I waited for the man to excuse us before flopping down on the springy white mattress that seemed to bounce with every movement I made.
We tried not to jump on our feet with excitement as we surveyed the rooms and the Hawthorne hotel premises. I held Bolutife’s hand as I tried not to squeal with excitement like a child’s misused squeak toy. This was it, what we’d worked and prayed for. Dinner was a buffet of familiar dishes, each with a twist. There was less pepper than our Yoruba palate was accustomed to, but everything was delicious. And there was catfish pepper soup.
We wolfed down our dinners with full smiles before reconvening in Sheriff’s room to finish our deliverables. One policy brief, one prototype of our innovation and one pitch to wow the judges. The journey had been long, and we were too tired and snappish to work more than a few hours, so we made the decision to go to bed and wake up before the pitch to work.
Day 1- Practice and Panels
We woke up at 5 on Day 1 on the pitch and worked on our deliverables until 8 am. Then, we ate breakfast, dressed, and headed to the Grand Hall.
Everyone was warm smiles and corporate-speak at the hall. We were handed tote bags filled with swag, including T-shirts, stationery, and stickers. And the day began with a rush.
The principal investigators offered to hear out our ideas and workshop if we wanted. They rotated around the tables, offering guidance and answering questions. The first two informed us that our idea was a bit too complex and asked how we were supposed to fit it in 5 minutes. Our hearts sank a bit, and we must have worn our emotions on our faces, because one of the women commented that she left us looking perplexed. A third investigator sat with us and was incredibly fascinated by our ideas. Dr. Funto did not know the miracle her curiosity and earnestness had wrought in lifting our spirits.
The Panel Session
Up next was the panel session, followed by the pitch practice session- a chance to practice our pitch and get feedback before the D-day. This was a great offer and a great idea. The only problem was that we did not have a pitch, or even the beginnings of a pitch. Malik threw our ideas into a PowerPoint slide, sent a link, and I threw that into Canva Premium as we tried to workshop and simplify our idea. The panel session was terrific, with people sharing their perspectives and experiences from the top of the Federal Ministry of Health to the cancer advocates affected by policy. Meanwhile, our team typed furiously away, trying to refine our idea with the advice given to us.
We ate lunch- a delightful variety of ingredients used in ways novel to us. Jollof rice with prunes, and a pineapple salad? And, of course, I took a hearty bowl of goat meat pepper soup.
Before The pitch
We were given some extra time before the pitch practice, as none of the teams seemed ready to pitch. And then it was time to practice the pitch. There were a number of recommendations; we needed a stronger intro, a hook to reel our audience in. We needed to keep to 5 minutes. There needed to be more than one person to talk, to demonstrate teamwork. We held on to this advice, determined to use it to chisel our pitch into perfection.
Exhaustion seemed to weigh down our bones as we rode the elevators up to our rooms, so we decided to rest for two hours and reconvene for dinner, and then lock in till we were done. It sounded like a good plan, and so we dispersed.
Day 2- The Pitch
I was only able to nap for about an hour before I woke up to the blaring of my alarm. It was 7pm. I wiped the sleep away from my eyes, and I was ready to work on whatever needed to be worked on. We wolfed down yet another deliciously overpriced dinner, and I took my requisite bowl of pepper soup (tripe and inu eran this time) and headed to Malik’s room to lock in. And lock in we did.
We had been given a giant notebook that was larger than my torso and a marker to sketch out our ideas. Both my laptop and Malik’s laptops were malfunctioning a bit, but together, we almost had a whole laptop. I had taken some bread rolls from the buffet in case we needed something to munch on. Yetunde was deliriously implying that we didn’t need sleep this night. Sheriffden’s eyebrows furrowed as he wrote down what we needed to do before the end of the night. And Bolutife was still functioning through exhaustion because she had gotten zero sleep.
I logged in to Bolu’s premium Canva account, ready to use it in ways it was ill-prepared to be used. Yetunde was logged in to Canva on her laptop, ready to put the policy brief into a design.
We worked tirelessly through the night, each person taking a brief nap at some point in the wee hours of the morning. Together, the five of us almost got the requisite hours of sleep. No exam, even the famed Part 2 Medical Boards had held us from the clutches of sleep in this way. By 7am, we were practising our pitches and had unanimously agreed to skip breakfast if necessary.
4CommunitiesbyCommunities
We made our way to the pitch contest, wearing our 4CommunitiesbyCommunities T-shirts and jeans. We were sleep-deprived and laughing a bit maniacally at the smallest of jokes. A ballot revealed we’d be pitching 5th out of the 6 teams. Malik put his head in the crook of his elbow and napped. Yetunde was muttering under her breath as she practised the pitch. Our two presenters had vastly different responses to stress.
All too soon, Team Trident next
All too soon, 4 teams had presented, and it was our turn. We made our way to the stage and stood in front of an AIT microphone. Was our humiliation or success going to be televised? Malik began the pitch by describing a policymaker overwhelmed by research that went into a pile unused, and flung a booklet that had been placed on the podium. The papers inside went flying around the stage, causing us to flinch a little. Malik continued undeterred until it was Yetunde’s turn to explain our innovation.
A Signathon, a petition contest, is held between universities in order to educate the public and pressure policymakers into action. Yetunde had barely finished when they began clapping for us to shut up, because our time was up. The 5-minute Q&A session had the judges asking us multiple questions for more than two minutes. We barely answered 2 questions before we were clapped ceremoniously off the stage. And it was over. Two months of overnight meetings in front of the Clinical students’ library, as mosquitoes feasted on our legs. One month of hybrid meetings and conference calls, when half our team was in Ilesha and half were in Ife. Three sleep-deprived days when we worked through a haze of exhaustion and confusion. Now we had to await the results.
We laughed as we looked at each other, and then we laughed some more. The last team was done soon, and then it was time to announce the results. Every team looked pretty happy and satisfied with themselves. We hadn’t seen each other’s pitches, but it was safe to assume they were satisfied with their pitches.
The moment we have been waiting for
“Please, God, don’t let us come last.” Bolutife prayed. They called out the winners in backwards order, starting from the sixth. We looked at each other in confusion as we were not called for sixth, fifth, fourth, or third position. And then, “Second position goes to Team Trident!”
Yetunde screamed. My chair fell down. We made our way to receive our giant cheque, feeling an odd mix of shock and elation as we took pictures. We did it! By some miracle, the only undergraduates had underdogged it and won. We looked back at the months of preparation, on how much we did not understand what we were going into, but did it anyway, and emerged victorious. My dearest reader, you can really just do things. And even if life is showing you pepper, don’t forget to eat pepper soup.
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